


Nights Become Days

by reginalds



Category: Spartacus Series (TV), Spartacus: Blood and Sand, Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, Spartacus: War of the Damned
Genre: Agron is an out of work actor, M/M, Mira works in a bar (and can drink everyone under the table), Spartacus is the best friend of all, and Nasir is the beautiful DJ who hangs out on rooftops, modern!AU, where everyone lives in New York City
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-18
Updated: 2013-09-18
Packaged: 2017-12-26 23:29:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/971551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reginalds/pseuds/reginalds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We saw in the dawn from the roof of the bar<br/>When nights become days and you’ve gone too far<br/>We listened to songbirds and rush hour cars<br/>And welcomed in the day.</p>
<p>Frank Turner, ‘Nights Become Days’</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nights Become Days

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written for the Spartacus Reverse Bang. I claimed Prompt #5 (http://sparty-reverse.livejournal.com/2788.html, click and scroll down!) by theextracookie on lj :) 
> 
> Title & epigraph borrowed from Frank Turner’s ‘Nights Become Days’. I also borrowed the name of Agron’s soap opera from ‘Las Tres Perfectas Solteras’, which is a Bolivian telenovela. 
> 
> This story has gone through a number of drastically different plot ideas. I loved that the prompt I chose didn’t really give more than a general idea on which to base a story, but I found that I got so excited about how open-ended it could be that I gave myself writers’ block. It worked out in the end, though, and I’m happy with this story, despite the fact that it’s probably nothing like the graphic-maker was expecting. (But I hope you like it anyway!) 
> 
> Here there be dive bars, soap operas, and New York City. 
> 
> (Warnings for swearing, because: Agron.)

The studio lights are too bright, and the mascara today’s makeup artist had forced on him is threatening to run into his eyes as Agron puts on his best rakishly-earnest-pool-boy face and hits his mark. 

“Sheila,” he says, reaching for the middle-aged woman he’s supposed to be having an affair with this week. “Sheila, please don’t leave me, I love you.” 

Sheila, whose name is actually Margaret, and who is secretly awesome – she carries a flask in her purse – pushes him away. 

“No, Fernando,” she says, and Agron bites the inside of his cheek to keep from sighing over the name the TV executives have given him. Sheila turns her head away for her dramatic pause before continuing. “You don’t love anyone but yourself.” 

Agron schools his face into a kicked puppy expression and stares guiltily at her until the director calls ‘cut’. 

When they wrap, Agron tramps wearily after Margaret towards the dressing rooms, rubbing at his eyes, which are stinging from the mascara. 

“You choking up on me?” Margaret asks, pulling a robe over the cleavage-displaying wrap dress she’s wearing for the day. 

“Fucking mascara,” Agron grumbles, and then pauses, staring at her. “Should I be choking up on you? You know something I don’t know?” 

She’s silent for a beat too long, and Agron sighs and swears. 

“Fuck,” he says, rubbing at his eyes again. “Fuck, how am I going to go?” 

“You’re going to get drunk and drown in the pool,” Margaret says, calmly, thumping him on the back. “I’m going to discover the body, cry for a little bit and then fall into Raul’s strong arms and have sex with him for half an episode before I find out that he’s cheating on me with Vanessa.” 

Despite himself, Agron laughs. 

“Fucking Raul,” he says, and Margaret leers at him. “Why can’t anyone just be happy on this show?” He asks, accepting the flask when Margaret hands it over and taking a swallow of rum and coke. “Why can’t we get married and not worry about paying rent for the rest of the year?” 

“Because it’s called ‘The Three Perfect Unmarried Women’,” Margaret says, rubbing a hand through his hair. “And no one ever gets to be happy in soap operas, you know that.” 

Agron sighs and reaches for the flask. 

“You’ll be okay though,” she says. “You know your Shakespeare and your Stanislavski; you’ll be fine. You deserve better than this shit, anyway.” 

Agron manages a smile and a tight hug when they separate at the door to the studio. She hails a cab, and he trudges toward the nearest subway stop that’ll take him into Brooklyn, trying to not feel too crushed that he’s a trained actor who can’t even manage a recurring role on a shitty soap opera.

The train is nearly empty, and Agron relishes the silence, staring at his reflection in the windows and then rubbing at his cheekbones, trying to get rid of the stage makeup that he’s missed. 

+

Spartacus is in the kitchen of their tiny apartment when Agron gets home, wrestling with a pan of homemade lasagne and Agron wraps him up in the biggest hug he can manage. 

Spartacus – who got his nickname courtesy of Agron, and his chiselled jaw – doesn’t even blink, just pats absently at Agron’s arms and says, “If you don’t let go of me the garlic bread will burn.” 

Agron stands back, and lets his bag fall to the floor, watching as Spartacus pulls a loaf of bread wrapped in foil out of their oven, and unwraps it carefully. 

“Are you sure about that bartender chick?” He asks, “Because I think we should get married.” 

Spartacus just laughs and hands him a plate of delicious, cheesy Italian food and pushes him towards the couch in front of their TV. 

“There should be a rugby game on, Ireland v. France” he says, ignoring Agron’s marriage proposal, and Agron decides that if he can’t have Spartacus at least he has lasagne. He settles comfortably into the couch, and flips on the TV, channel surfing until he finds the rugby. 

Spartacus brings his own plate and the garlic bread to the table they’ve constructed out of plywood and phonebooks in front of the TV, and settles into Agron’s side. 

“Bad day at work?” He asks, in between mouthfuls of lasagne. 

“They’re killing me off so Sheila can hook up with Raul,” Agron tells him.

Spartacus frowns. “That’s rough, man.” 

He sounds so earnest that Agron can’t help but laugh, and he shoves Spartacus into the couch and shrugs. “I’ll find something else,” he says, “maybe some theatre thing. I’m tired of playing boy toys.”

“I’m tired of watching you playing boy toys,” Spartacus admits and Agron makes a face at him. “How are you going to go? Dramatic off-screen accident?” 

“Drowning,” Agron tells him. “Pretty tame. Remember when I played that rent boy who was killed with a letter opener?” 

“Oh, yeah,” Spartacus says, smiling fondly. “Duro nearly got a hernia he laughed so hard.” 

Agron shoves him again, and they fall quiet, watching the Irish slaughter the French. 

Agron sprawls all over the couch when they’re done eating, and Spartacus picks up the dishes and stows them in the sink. He comes back to stand near where Agron has thrown his arm over his eyes and sighs before clapping his hands. 

“Right,” he says. “Bar.” 

Agron looks up at him hopefully. “Bar?” 

“There’s a DJ on Thursday nights,” Spartacus says, and he drags Agron off of the couch and throws a jacket at his head. Spartacus pulls on his own jacket, and then grabs Agron by the arm and starts shoving him towards the door of their tiny apartment. Agron grumbles, but he doesn’t try to trip him on the way down the stairs, which Spartacus takes as the thank you it is. 

The bar is downtown; close enough to the East Village to be vaguely trendy, but not so close as to be outrageously expensive. It’s called ‘The Gladiator’, because someone had installed a neon gladiator above the door sometime in the late seventies, and Spartacus works security there on weekend nights. 

Their friend Mira bartends there to put herself through law school, and Agron loves Mira. On top of being the smartest person he’s ever met, she makes a mean margarita and she occasionally throws drunk frat boys out of the bar all by herself. 

The bar is buzzing with people when they get in, not bad for a Thursday night, a crowd of them moving around on the makeshift dance floor that’s sprung up in the corner of the bar near the DJ booth. Agron gets half a glance at the DJ before Spartacus drags him off to the bar, a slice of stubbled cheek and long brown hair beneath the flashing lights, but he forgets him quickly when Mira tugs him over the bar for a kiss. 

They order their beers and get stuck in, and Mira stops by them and eats cocktail olives whenever there’s a lull in the demand for drinks. 

“Tell me everything,” she demands as soon as she has a moment, and Agron flicks lime wedges at her. 

“They’re killing me off on this soap,” he tells her. “Next week. It’s not too big of a deal, I guess, soaps aren’t really what I had in mind when I was studying Shakespeare at school –”

“He was sulking,” Spartacus interrupts and then shrugs at him when Agron glares. “What? You were.” 

Agron sighs hugely and takes a long swig off his Stella Artois before answering them. “It’s just that I fucking trained, you know?” He says, and groans, sticking a hand in his hair and grimacing when he finds that it’s still a bit stiff from the hairspray they used on set earlier. 

“I studied Chekhov and Stoppard, and I wrote papers on Waiting-for-fucking-Godot and now I can’t even hold down a role as a fucking spray-tanned pool boy on this shitty soap opera?” He sighs again and finishes his beer so that he can pretend that he didn’t see the pitying look that passed between Spartacus and Mira. “It just sucks,” he finishes lamely. “They’re going to drown me in favour of this asshole Raul, or some shit, and Duro’s still going to be laughing when I see him at Christmas.” 

Mira pats his head fondly and gets him another beer. “Maybe this will be a good thing,” she says, reasonably. “Maybe it’ll give you some time to regroup, to figure out where you want to go with this whole acting lark. Because you did train, right? And I’m sure you’re really fucking good at what you do and there’s no reason for you to settle for banging middle-aged widowers on a daytime soap opera.” 

“Sheila isn’t actually a widower,” Agron says absently. “She and Ralph never got married because she decided to run off with Hot-Postman-Frank the night before the wedding and then when Frank left her in a rut in New Jersey, Ralph wouldn’t take her back.” 

Mira looks like she’s trying very hard to not laugh at him. “Sheila sounds like a bitch.” 

“She’s fucking awesome,” Agron says, shrugging. “Or Margaret is, I mean. The woman who plays her. She has a flask.” 

“But is that what you want to do with the rest of your life? Play love interests on soap operas? I’m sure you’re really good Agron, you deserve better,” Mira says and reaches across the bar to punch Spartacus in the shoulder. 

“He is really good,” Spartacus says loyally. “Remember when you were Macbeth at school? You were awesome at that.” 

“I was only an understudy,” Agron grumbles. “I only got to do it because the guy who actually played Macbeth got food poisoning.” 

“Maybe,” Spartacus says, shrugging. “You fucking rocked it, either way.” 

Agron smiles weakly and downs his beer. “I’ll think about it,” he promises. “I know I can do better, it’s just hard. It’s harder than I thought it would be.” 

“If it’s not hard, it’s not worth having,” Spartacus says stoutly, and Agron and Mira look at each other for a minute before bursting into laughter. 

“I imagine that sounded less like a line from a low-budget pornography in your head,” Mira says, smirking and turning away from them to a handful of college students, who look thoroughly intimidated when she smiles brightly at them. 

Agron and Spartacus stay at the bar for another couple of drinks, which wind their way through Agron’s system warmly and leave him feeling lighter than he has in about a week. 

“Come on,” he says, pushing himself up, and grabbing at Spartacus’ arm. “Come on, I like this song, let’s dance.” 

They make their way to the crowded dance floor, clearing a path by virtue of being taller and broader than most of the other patrons. Spartacus is a laughably terrible dancer, but at least he’s enthusiastic, and Agron is tipsy and feeling warm. He follows Spartacus to the centre of the dance floor and joins in on the clumsy cha-cha he appears to be doing. 

They dance for a while, sloppily, and Agron laughs each time Spartacus stumbles because the DJ is playing a song he likes. The DJ is surprisingly good, playing a lot of songs that Agron has never heard before as well as unexpected remixes of classics. He feels good, halfway to being drunk and dancing messily to the heavy bass beat. 

He gets a good look at the DJ when another weird but strangely brilliant remix comes on, and falls over Spartacus’ feet, narrowly missing falling flat on his face. 

The DJ, he realizes, while still gaping, is fucking gorgeous. 

“Okay?” Spartacus shouts in his ear, and Agron nods faintly, peering over Spartacus’ head to stare at the DJ some more. Spartacus turns around to look at what Agron is looking at, and grins widely at him. 

Spartacus steers them towards the makeshift DJ booth, because he’s a good wingman and a better friend, and doesn’t even laugh too much while Agron stares. 

The DJ is so entirely Agron’s type it’s not even funny. He has on a white shirt that’s only buttoned halfway up his chest, and is rolled all the way up his biceps, sweaty and transparent with the heat. Agron is caught between wanting to take him to his bed and never let him leave, and wanting to give him flowers and poetry.

The DJ looks up, clever fingers coming off the decks to reach for his beer bottle, and when he tips his head back to swallow the rest of the beer, Agron actually whimpers and is very glad that the speakers are playing Jessie J at a volume that ensures no one can hear exactly how pathetic he’s being. 

Time stretches languidly and turns feverish in the heat of the bar. Agron stares and stares, mapping the DJ’s jawline and collarbones with his eyes, and ignoring Spartacus when he digs his fingers into his ribs and tries to shove Agron in the direction of the DJ booth. 

It’s late when Spartacus starts making noise about getting home, needing sleep, because some of us have real jobs, Agron. Agron hesitates, casting another glance back at the DJ, and does a double take when he realizes that the man is not there anymore. He whips his head around, and sees the sleek brown hair bobbing in the direction of the bar. 

Spartacus sighs, and pushes him lightly towards the bar. “Buy him a drink,” he says, “I’ll be outside. Meet me in five minutes if you want to head home together, if not, I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

He pats Agron’s shoulder and moves away, because Spartacus is the most wonderful human being Agron has ever had the pleasure of knowing. 

Agron makes his way through the crowd and stops awkwardly beside the guy at the bar, trying to keep his eyes off his ass – an admirable endeavour, due to the fact that the guy is currently bent half over the bar, shouting his order at Mira. And his jeans are really tight. So are Agron’s, mostly in the groin area. 

He shifts awkwardly, and when the guy stands up straight again, he taps his shoulder. The guy startles and looks at Agron, and fuck, he’s pretty. He’s got nice lips, and wide brown eyes, and thin eyebrows that he’s raising at Agron, like he’s waiting for him to say something. 

“I, uh,” Agron says, “I like this song!” 

“Who, Le1f?” The guy saya, taking a long swig of beer (Agron tears his eyes away from his lips with a herculean effort). “Yeah, he’s awesome.” 

“He’s gay, isn’t he?” Agron asks, and then gives himself a mental punch in the gut. He’s never been too good at subtle. Something shutters in the DJ’s eyes, and he straightens up, looking away from Agron, over the dance floor. 

Agron barely swallows his groan. “I just, I mean…” He takes a breath – difficult, in the humid air in the club, and with the DJ’s proximity. “Can I buy you a drink?” 

That gets the DJ’s eyes back on him, at least, cool brown eyes that rake up and down his body – across the old, Metallica t-shirt, the baggy jeans, the desperate look in his eyes – before he raises the beer in his hand, the one he just ordered, and which is still mostly full. 

“Oh,” Agron says. “Right. Sorry, I’ll just…” He casts a hand blindly over his shoulder, and the DJ nods slowly. 

The words, when they come, are quiet, barely there, and if Agron hadn’t been staring at the guy’s mouth, he probably wouldn’t have noticed them at all. 

“I’m Nasir,” the DJ says, and Agron stumbles over the letters in his own name in his haste to say them. The DJ nods, gives him half a smile and disappears back in the direction of the DJ booth. 

Agron stares after him for a while before rubbing his hands over his face, feeling suddenly, incredibly tired. He moves away from the bar, through the crowd, and finds Spartacus outside just like he promised. They don’t talk on the way home, content to listen to the subway screeching and groaning beneath them, and the dull roar of midnight traffic. 

\+ 

Agron spends the rest of the week moping. He goes for long, aimless runs around their neighbourhood, and watches too much daytime television. Spartacus has taken to watching him and sighing from the corner of the room, so Agron spends most of his time wandering around. He goes to the local public library, walks until he finds the theatre section, and spends all of one afternoon rereading his favourite parts of Romeo and Juliet. He call his agent half-heartedly, but pretends that the reception is bad and hangs up on her when she tells him that she’s found him auditions on a couple of other soaps. 

On Saturday, Spartacus suggests going back to the bar, and Agron flat out refuses, and Spartacus drags him to a beer garden in the West Village instead, where they sit outside and drink overpriced beer and watch people walk by. On Sunday, Agron sleeps until late in the afternoon, mopes around the apartment and reviews the script he’d been sent. 

“I don’t even have any lines,” he moans to Spartacus later in the night. “No fucking lines at all. I’m only going to be on set for half a day. I’ve been on this fucking show for two fucking months, giving my little brother blackmail material for the next two fucking decades, and the only goodbye I’m going to get is the camera panning over my half-naked body in the pool for ten seconds, before they move on to someone else.” 

Spartacus just looks at him for a minute, sets down his book, lets Agron catch his breath, and says, “Agron, you’ve hated being on this show.” 

“I know, but –“ 

“When we watch it, you spend half the time cringing, and then leave as soon as the credits come up, talking about how this wasn’t what you signed up for when you went to acting school.” 

“I know! But –“ 

“Agron.” Spartacus says patiently, and Agron glares at him balefully. “This is a good thing. The only place you can go from here is up. Why don’t you take some time to regroup and talk to your agent about how you’re thinking of trying to do some work for the stage. That’s what you want, right?” 

“I don’t have the right build for Hamlet,” Agron mutters in the face of Spartacus’ logic. “Hamlet never played rugby.” 

“Well no,” Spartacus says, steepling his fingers. “But Guildenstern might have.” 

Agron just blinks at him for a second before moving forward to tackle Spartacus back onto his bed in the biggest hug he can manage. 

“Rosencrantz was the rugby player, for sure,” he says into Spartacus’ neck, instead of ‘thank you for being my friend, I love you in an entirely platonic way, you’re my best friend, thank you, thank you’. 

Spartacus, because he is nothing less than a really wonderful person, seems to understand. 

\+ 

On Wednesday, they go back to the bar. The one with the hot DJ (who Agron is studiously not thinking about), and Mira, and the gladiator sign over the door. Agron had filmed his scenes on Sunday, spent two hours lying in a pool, and come home feeling both depressed, and like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. Spartacus had handed him a beer, and he had spent the rest of the day shooting the shit with Duro over Skype. 

The show broadcasts every Wednesday at four, and they show up to the bar with time to spare. It’s blissfully quiet, because it’s Wednesday, and the work-day isn’t even over yet. Mira is sitting on the bar, texting, and there’s someone moving in the backroom, just barely visible. 

Mira waves brightly and holds up the remote to the television over the bar. “What channel is it again?” She calls as they make their way over, and Agron calls back, grinning at her. He feels relaxed, comfortable, and glad that this incredibly shitty part of his life is over. 

And then Nasir, hot-DJ Nasir, the one who Agron made a complete and utter fool of himself over, walks out of the backroom holding a cocktail shaker and smiling at them. And Agron tenses right back up and trips over a barstool. 

Spartacus catches him, and Mira raises an eyebrow, looks between Agron and Nasir and smirks like the devil. 

“What are we doing then?” Nasir asks, like the last time they had seen each other Agron hadn’t been trying to talk his way into his pants by namedropping gay rappers from Brooklyn. 

“Watching Agron on TV,” Mira says calmly, switching the TV over the bar on, and flipping through the channels. Nasir makes an interested noise and sidles over to them, putting the cocktail shaker down and hopping up to sit on the bar, his thighs dangerously close to where Agron and Spartacus have sat down. 

Agron gives Spartacus a deer-in-the-headlights look, but his friend just shrugs, and turns to the TV.

“I didn’t know you were an actor,” Nasir says softly, and Agron tears his eyes away from the way the denim of his jeans stretches over his thighs and nods jerkily. 

“I’m not really an actor,” he says, “not officially, or anything. I was on this terrible soap opera and they just killed me off this week, and now I’m not quite sure where I want to go.” 

“What do you want to do?” Nasir asks, and his eyes are big and brown and kind and Agron swallows past the sudden tightness in his throat and looks down at his hands.

“Maybe construction?” He jokes, but it falls flat. “I don’t really know,” he admits, softly. “I’d like to be on stage, but my inability to hold down a part in a midday soap opera rules out that possibility.” 

Nasir furrows his brow. It’s a beautiful brow, and Agron has to look away again, or drink a lot of tequila before he can deal with the intensity of the man’s expression. 

“Why does it rule it out?” Nasir asks. 

“Well you have to be talented to be on stage,” Agron says, twisting his hands together. “And I’m playing pool boys, and not very well.” 

“If you could have any part you wanted,” Nasir says, taking pity on Agron and hopping off the bar to reach for a pint glass. “If you could play anything, what would you play?” 

“Henry V,” Agron says promptly, taking a large gulp of the beer Nasir hands him. “I’d like to play a king leading his subjects to war. If I could sing I’d want to be in Les Mis.” 

Nasir blinks. “That’s… not what I was expecting.” 

Mira flaps a hand at them, and points at the TV, which is playing the tinny theme music. Agron leans forward a little desperately and at his expression, Nasir leans forward as well. “Please don’t judge me too harshly. We all have to pay the rent somehow.” 

Nasir salutes, and smiles at him, a real smile with a hint of mischief that stretches his lips wide. “This is a safe space,” he says, mock-seriously, and Spartacus shushes them. 

In the end, it’s not as painful as Agron thought it would be. The show runs for about an hour, and he’s only in the last twenty minutes, so they eat peanuts and then order pizza straight to the bar and begin using the peanuts as missiles to throw at the TV.

“It is really, like, appallingly bad.” Agron says to Nasir in between his second and third beers. “Why would anyone watch this shit?” 

Nasir’s fingers are warm under his chin before he can think about it, and the smaller man smirks. “For this face, of course!” 

“And probably because they’re unemployed,” Mira pipes up, her mouth full of pepperoni pizza.

Agron groans and hides his face in his hand when his scene comes up. It’s nothing too bad, dramatic violins playing over a shot of him in the pool in his too-small swimming shorts that ends with a close-up of his ex-lover’s face. 

Nasir rubs his back calmly until the scene is over and then reaches behind him and breaks out the tequila. Agron loves him.   
The bar starts getting busy after that, people trickling in after work and Nasir and Mira move away to take orders and make drinks. Spartacus moves to sit next to Agron and raises a single eyebrow at him. 

“Shut up,” Agron says. “Shut up, he’s just really hot, okay?” 

Spartacus says nothing, just settles in by Agron’s elbow and drinks his beer. 

+

They close the bar down, tipsy and most of the way to drunk on beer, and a tray of tequila slammers, and then Nasir stands up and says: “We should go on the roof!”

And they do. It’s dirty and a bit cliché, but they stretch right out on the roof, and watch the stars. Nasir and Agron lay side-by-side, Mira and Spartacus an arm’s length away, and their shoulders brush. Nasir is smaller, and warm, and after a long stretch of silence Agron turns his hand and presses his fingers through Nasir’s’, who smirks up at the sky, and lets him. 

They lie out on the roof for hours, watching the stars and talking occasionally, and every once in a while Nasir or Mira walk back down to the bar for more beer, or bags of chips. 

Spartacus and Mira leave first, holding hands and walking back down into the bar to collect their things and catch the subway home. Nasir stretches after they leave and sits up, staring out across the city to the reddish gleam on the horizon – New York City never gets fully dark. 

“Where do you live?” Nasir asks, pulling his phone out of his pocket to check the time. Agron sits and looks over his shoulder. It’s closing in on three in the morning, and the traffic around them is lazy and hushed. He thinks that if he could, he’d stay up on this roof for the rest of his life. 

“Brooklyn,” he tells Nasir, “Bushwick.” 

Nasir shoves his phone back in his pocket and looks at Agron. “It’s late,” he says, “and the train schedules are all fucked by now. You’ll never get home.” 

Agron just raises his eyebrows at him, and something starts buzzing under his skin.

“Come home with me,” Nasir says, and Agron agrees before the words have finished leaving Nasir’s lips. Nasir laughs at that, carefree and unfairly beautiful, and pulls Agron to his feet. He’s surprisingly strong and Agron tips over him half-accidentally, ends up standing right in Nasir’s space, half-way to kissing him. 

Nasir looks at him steadily, then grins wildly, rocks up on his toes to press a filthy kiss to Agron’s mouth and pulls away in one sudden movement. 

“I only live a couple blocks away,” he says, “Got lucky and inherited an apartment from an eccentric uncle. Race you to the bedroom?” 

He turns on his heel as he says it, and Agron splutters for a moment and then rushes to follow Nasir. They clatter down the stairs and out of the bar, which Nasir locks sloppily behind him. He drags Agron down into another kiss outside of the bar that wipes Agron’s mind entirely clean. Before he’s regained his senses Nasir has taken off again, laughing and running down the street, and Agron gives chase.

They run the two blocks to Nasir’s apartment and stumble into the building laughing, crowding each other on the stairs up to the second floor and Nasir’s fingers are greedy on the collar of Agron’s shirt. Agron slides his hands around Nasir’s waist, which is slim and warm and shudders at the way his hands are so huge on Nasir’s trim hips. 

Nasir, maddeningly, just smirks at him, and opens the door to his apartment so that they fall through it. Through the rushing in his head, Agron’s hands on Nasir feel like they’re burning. 

+

In the morning, Agron wakes up to an empty bed and the smell of coffee. Nasir is sitting on the counter in his kitchen, wearing boxers and not much else. Agron reaches for him, and he bats his hands away, gently, handing him a cup of coffee instead. 

“One question,” Nasir says, pushing a bagel towards Agron as well, “Well, two, actually.” 

Agron, his mouth full of bagel and lox, gestures at him to go on. 

“That night I first met you,” Nasir says, looking at him coyly over the rim of his coffee mug. “We’re you trying to hit on me? By telling me that you had heard of a gay rapper from Brooklyn? Like, is that this generation’s ‘Have you ever been to Fire Island?’” 

“In my defense,” Agron says, “You were really fucking hot.” 

Nasir just raises his eyebrows at him. “That’s not a very good defense.” 

“Did you have another question or did you just want to embarrass me?” 

“My other question was where do we go from here,” Nasir says, looking him straight in the eye. And Agron loves him for it. Because he’s only barely getting to know Nasir, and already he’s made it clear that he’s not the type of man that flinches from a challenge. In fact, he seems like he’s more the type of man to stare it straight in the face and shout it into submission. 

“Because I’ve done that one night stand shit,” Nasir continues, “and it’s not really my style. But you don’t really strike me as the kind of guy who knows what he wants.” 

“I want you,” Agron says, dumbly.

“I mean in life, though,” Nasir says. “Do you know what you want to do with your life? Do you know what’s going to make you happy?” 

He’s kind about it, breaking Agron’s heart, but it hurts nonetheless. He hops down off the counter, and lays cool fingers on Agron’s cheeks. 

“I really like you,” he says, “and I think you’re a good person, who deserves a lot more than he has right now. In fact, you’re a pretty great person, shitty come-ons, and all. And you’re gorgeous, but you’re not happy.” He stands on his toes, to press a kiss to the corner of Agron’s mouth. “And if you’re not happy now, being with me isn’t going to make you happy.” 

“It might,” Agron says, stubbornly, but Nasir shakes his head. 

“I’m not a miracle cure,” he says. “Come back when you’ve got it figured out, okay?” 

And then he kisses Agron and pads back into the bedroom. Overall, it’s the classiest breakup Agron has ever been part of. And they weren’t even dating. 

He gets home in a daze, and slumps down beside Spartacus on the couch. 

“He kicked you out?” Spartacus asks, muting the game after taking a look at Agron’s face.

“For my own good,” Agron says, shrugging. Spartacus frowns at him and he sighs and stretches. His muscles are still pleasantly sore from the evening before, and he tries to not think about it. 

“He said that he wasn’t what I needed right now. He said that I needed to figure my shit out and get some direction in life and be happy, and that when I did I should call him because he really likes me.” 

Spartacus gapes at him for a minute and then presses a button on the remote and turns back to the rugby. “You sure know how to pick ‘em,” is all he says.

+

Agron mopes for a week. He feels that he’s deserved that. Because he’s had the most beautiful man in New York City beneath his hands and mouth, and then he lost him like his life was actually a soap opera.

At the end of the week he calls Duro, who kicks his ass over the phone in a way that only younger brothers ever can. 

“Have you never seen a romantic comedy, asshole?” He asks when he’s done impugning Agron’s honour. “Get your shit together and then go and sweep him off his fucking feet.” 

Agron starts to argue that it’s not quite as simple as that, and Duro hangs up on him. Tough love. 

It takes some time, because it’s real life and not a montage from a film, but Agron does get his shit together. He buys his agent coffee and an almond croissant at Colombe, which is outrageously expensive, but her favourite, and then he tells her that he’s done with soap operas and does she know of any theatre companies in the city that might be auditioning for shows. She looks hesitant at first, but he reminds her that his background is theatre, he understands it more than the talentless sausagefest that most soap auditions tended to be. 

They work together on it, she emails him auditions and scripts, and he shows up and gives it his all. He talks his way into one of the libraries at NYU and spends hours reading texts on acting and theatre, makes Spartacus jump one night by creeping up on him and shouting “Cry god for Saint George!” in his ear. 

He goes out occasionally, but never brings anyone home because he thinks about Nasir more often than not. He sees him, just once, waiting for the Six train in Union Square, standing on the opposite platform with his earbuds in. Agron stares until a train rushes in and obscures the view and that night when Spartacus asks him if he wants to go out, he declines and stays home drinking beer on their fire escape instead. 

The next day he presses his nose back to the grindstone and makes the humble hustle work for him. 

And then it does, all at once. He gets a call back. And then another call back and an audition, and then a director straight out of acting school calls him and offers him a role in a production that he’s doing of Julius Caesar, set in 1920s New York City. It’s in a tiny theatre in Brooklyn that barely ever pulls in enough money with their productions to break even, but it’s a role in a play that he likes, and if they’re not getting paid too much it means that everyone is there because they love it and not because of the money.

Agron gapes at the phone, accepts, and then punches the air before calling Duro. He’s still smiling when Spartacus gets home, and he tackles him as soon as he’s in the door with the good news. 

“Come on,” Spartacus says and Agron gives him another spontaneous hug, because he’s beaming nearly as widely as Agron is. “Come on, let’s go to the bar.” 

Agron blinks at him and Spartacus looks at him expectantly, until it dawns on Agron and he wipes his hands over his face and says, “Fuck. Fuck… fuck.” 

Spartacus grins at him and drags him out of the apartment before Agron can panic about not having shaved in two days and wearing rumpled clothes. They catch the subway and then walk side-by-side down the street to the bar, taking up most of it by virtue of being taller and more broad-shouldered than anyone else around. 

It’s a Tuesday, and the bar is quiet, except for a couple of college students sitting in the corner and shooting the shit. Mira is behind the bar looking at her phone, although she brightens and grins when she sees them and jerks her head along the bar, to where Nasir is standing, fiddling with the iPod that’s hooked up to the speaker system. It’s playing something indie, right now, acoustic guitar with a little bit of hip-hop flavour, and Agron walks straight over to where he’s standing and leans over the bar. 

“Hi.” 

Nasir jumps a bit and turns around, breaking out into a grin when he sees Agron. “Hey.” 

“There’s this theatre in Brooklyn that’s putting on a production of Julius Caesar,” Agron says in a rush, “and I just got a call from the director telling me that I’ve got a part in it.” 

Nasir smiles a slow, warm smile that unfolds across his face beautifully. 

“Also,” Agron continues. “I know what I want now.” Nasir raises an eyebrow, and Agron leans even farther over the bar. “You,” he says, “I want you. Also, a pint of Stella, but we can do that later, or…” 

He’s cut off with a yelp when Nasir leans forward and presses his mouth against Agron’s in a messy and sort of wonderful kiss. Mira wolf-whistles in the background and Spartacus groans loudly. Nasir moves his hand off of Agron’s shoulder to flip both of them off, then stops kissing Agron for a minute to vault over the bar and wrap his arms properly around Agron. 

When they’re both gasping for breath, Nasir pulls back and looks up at Agron, grinning. “I’ve been waiting for a month and a half for you to come back in here and say that.” 

“Take the rest of the day off,” Mira calls over to them. “Get your ridiculous faces out of here.” 

Agron quirks an eyebrow at Nasir, who nods at him, and he tugs the smaller man out of the bar and to the subway station nearby. They kiss on the subway platform, and when someone knocks into them harshly, Nasir stares the man down and Agron just looks at the guy, who promptly scurries away. They both laugh, softly, and Nasir presses his nose to the centre of Agron’s chest and just breathes and lets Agron hold him until the subway screeches its way into the station. 

The train isn’t too crowded, and they sit next to each other, holding hands and smiling each time they catch each other’s eyes. 

Halfway through the ride into Brooklyn, an older woman gets on the train and Agron stands to let her take his seat. She does, sits and places her shopping between her knees, and looks up to thank him. He’s startled at the bright smile that breaks across her face, and the way she reaches up to clasp his hand. 

“Fernando!” She gasps and Agron’s heart sinks. “Oh, you’re him, aren’t you? You were in one of my favourite soaps!” He shakes her hand carefully, and lets her talk at him for the rest of the subway ride. Before she gets off he autographs the back of a receipt for her groceries. 

She toddles off, smiling, and Nasir laughs at Agron the rest of the way into Brooklyn. It’s the start of something beautiful.


End file.
